


Bubble Beards and Bedtime Stories

by SomewhereApart



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dimples Queen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 19:06:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16898247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomewhereApart/pseuds/SomewhereApart
Summary: Regina tells Roland about Harry Potter as a bedtime story





	Bubble Beards and Bedtime Stories

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt: Missing year, Regina tells Roland about Harry Potter/ recounts the story by heart and Roland decides he wants to go to Hogwarts too! (He doesn't understand it's not real because magic is real in his world)

They leave him with Belle. The Merry Men, when they go, they leave Roland with Belle. It’s only a few nights, after all, and Belle and Robin have a rapport, and she’s warm and loving and exactly who you probably _would_ want to leave your child with if you’d gone off on a scouting mission that could prove dangerous.

It would have been a fine plan, if the weather had held. But it hadn’t. Instead, the skies had opened up, torrential downpour and rumbling thunder and slashes of lightning through the sky. It’s bad enough that even Regina, who doesn’t care one bit for the thief and his band of ruffians, sends out a silent hope that the thick canopy of the Forest provides some modicum of shelter and and they haven’t been washed away down some perilous gorge, or fried to a crisp by lightning. It will be days before they return, days before they know for sure, so there’s no use in worrying over it now.

Not that she worries for the man, because she doesn’t. His son, though.. well, she has a weakness for that boy and those dimples, and the way his dark eyes light up when she sneaks him a sweet from the royal table on her way out of the hall after luncheon. So when thunder rumbles loud and ominous just after supper, and that sweet face is pinched with worry and unease, she sneaks him two sweets, a whole cookie, and a wink. Let Belle deal with the sugar high.

But an hour later, it’s she who is staring into pitiful little-boy eyes, as Belle tells her apologetically, “He kept asking for you. I told him no a dozen times, but he wouldn’t quit.”

“Only a dozen?” Regina questions, reaching for Roland and settling him into the curve of her hip like he belongs there (her heart cries _Henry_ , and she ignores it as best she can). “And you gave in? You’d be a terrible parent.”

The brunette scowls, and opens her mouth but Regina has nothing more to say to her (has nothing to say to most anyone these days), so she addresses Roland instead, “What is it you wanted, then?”

His lower lip juts out, those dark eyes pitiful as they look up at her and she wonders privately how Belle managed to last to a dozen. She must have a steel resolve.

“I’m scared from the storm. I want to stay with you.”

“Stay with me? Why ever for, Roland?” Her fingers graze through dark curls. They’re tangled and sticky in places, and he smells like dirt and sugar. When was the last time this boy had a bath?

“Because you’re strong, and you’re safe, and you saved me from the monkey. And you have magic.”

Those last two, yes, but the first two, well, she’s not so sure.

“The storm can’t breach castle walls,” Regina assures gently. “You’ll be fine with Belle. Go on back.” She makes to hand him over again, but Roland clings and whines (the urge to inform him primly that _Whining is not tolerated in this house_ makes her heart ache), and Regina sighs, tightening her hold. “It’s late, sweetheart.” It’s not, not really, but he’s five so, yes, it is. Late enough that little boys should be headed for pjs and toothbrushes and bedtime stories.

“I want to stay _here_ ,” he insists, and now it’s Belle and Regina both who are sighing, and she reaches for him, the bookworm, and mutters that she’ll deal with it, it’s fine, Regina clearly doesn’t want her evening disturbed.

And oh, that rankles, the assumption that she _knows_ , and so Regina shifts Roland just a hair closer to her chamber doors and gives a clipped reply: “It’s fine. He can stay. Goodnight.”

She steps inside and closes said doors with a wave of her hand and a soft bang, and then, well, then she’s stuck with a child for the night isn’t she?

A child who seems to have forgotten all about the storm, his face bright and curious, gaze sweeping across her chambers, taking in all the finery with a little gasp. For a child who lives in a castle now, he’s awfully impressed. He wriggles in her arms, clearly ready to be set free, and oh, he’s not the least bit tired, is he? She rues those extra sweets now.

“Not so fast, mister,” she warns, her grasp held firm. Roland stills and looks up at her, angelic all of a sudden, and oh, this child is a little monster, isn’t he? Spoiled rotten, she bets. “Dirty little boys don’t get to sleep in the Queen’s chambers, so if you’re staying the night, you’re having a bath.”

His face falls then, a frown so terribly forlorn settling onto his features. “A bath?” he asks, miserably. “But it’s already cold.”

“Well, then a hot bath is just the thing, isn’t it?” Regina reasons, and when his little head cocks to the side, a look of interest on his face, she wonders how many of those he’s had in his young life. Hot baths are probably hard to come by in the forest. “It’s non-negotiable, Roland. If you want to stay messy, you can go back to Belle.”

“No!” he insists quickly, his little fingers grasping at the sleeve of her dress. “I’ll take a bath. If I hafta.”

He certainly does have to, she’s just spotted a smudge of grime behind one ear, but his protests die out as soon as he realizes what a bath in the Queen’s rooms entails. A deep tub, filled with warm water and frothy bubbles, and once he’s in she begins to suspect she’ll never get him _out_. He makes a bubble beard and a bubble hat, and she has to be vigilant not for slips and falls, but for soap suds running into sensitive eyes and water gone _too cold_.

She doesn’t mind, though, not really. She’ll sit right here on a cold stone floor, in a dressing gown and robe now, her thigh splotched with wet from where he got a little overzealous in his splashing earlier. She’ll stay here, and she’ll re-warm the water of the tub with a swirl of her fingers when it begins to go tepid. And she’ll try very hard not to think of another little boy, of yellow plastic tug-boats and purple soap paint, and bubble beards for both of them. It hurts, being with roland, but it’s heals, too, being able to mother a child, if only for a night (her arms ache, her belly aches, her heart _aches_ , _Henry)_.

A half hour goes by, maybe an hour, and Roland’s fingertips are wrinkly, his bubbles all gone, the water dingy by the time he asks, “Can you tell me a story?”

“A story?” she asks, shifting, lifting her chin from where it had been pillowed on her forearms (which had in turn rested on the edge of the tub). “What kind of story?”

“One about magic.”

Regina frowns. She knows many stories about magic, but most are unsuitable for a child. Death and betrayal and pain do not good bath time stories make. And she won’t tell him of fairies or true love, either. Those stories turn her stomach after all these years. She wishes she had a good one, a story for a child, for a little boy, one full of adventure and magic and laughter, one with a happy ending.

It comes to her, like a bolt of lightning (how appropriate), and she grins.

“Alright,” she agrees. “I’ll tell you a story about magic, but only if you’re ready for bed. Are you ready for bed?”

He thinks on it for a moment - bath or story, what a terrible conundrum, and she chuckles as she thinks of how reluctant he’d been about the bath in the first place. But then he nods, his half-dry curls swinging as he does, and she nods back in agreement. The towel she holds out for him is plush and soft and it swallows him up as she wraps it around him, then rubs at arms and legs and tummy and hair (it goes wild, standing up at odd angles from having been scrubbed, and they both giggle). His clothes are still dirty, so she summons with a thought: _pajamas_. Then stops breathing for a moment when she finds her hand clutching not a nightshirt but soft blue footie pajamas covered in cartoon hippos.

_Henry._

She doesn’t breathe again until the flannel is pressed to her nose, and her eyes go wet when they smell like ozone and magic, not Ivory and No-More-Tears.

Roland _Ooooh_ s at the new discovery, and Regina blinks the tears back, clears her throat, and orders, “one foot in, and then the other” in a voice that would never fool an adult but slips right past the little boy. She lets him tug the zipper (up, and then down halfway and then up and down and up, and he’s laughing, and who knew a zipper could be so much fun?), and then scoops him up again, carrying him into her room and snuggling under the covers. She’d meant for him to sleep on the chaise, she remembers just a minute too late, but by then he’s cuddled into her side and looking up at her expectantly.

Right. Story time.

Regina clears her throat and begins, “ _Once upon a time, there was a boy named Harry, who lived in a far away land called England. He was an ordinary boy, or so he thought, nothing special about him…”_

She tells him about Privet Drive, and the Dursleys, and the cupboard under the stairs, and _But last year I had thirty-seven!_ (Roland’s eyes are like saucers at just the thought of so many gifts). She tells him about a letter from a magical school, about many letters, and determined owls, and _No post on Sundays_ (and then she has to explain the postal system - the owls he hadn’t questioned in the least). She tells him about a house _full of letters,_ and a shack on a rock (”A big storm like this one?” he asks, and “yes,” she tells him, “Just like this” while wind howls outside), and pounding on the door, and a giant man with a birthday cake, and _Have you ever made anything happen, anything you couldn’t quite explain?_

And then she remembers she forgot to tell him about the zoo, and the snake behind the glass, and so she backtracks, and she tells him, and she explains zoos, and they talk for a while about elephants and giraffes, and she tells him about the animals on his pajamas, and Roland says he thinks he’d like a hippo as a pet. She doesn’t have the heart to tell him they’re not exactly domesticated. Or of efficient size for keeping.

“But what happened to Harry and the giant?” he asks her, finally, adding, “What’s his name again?”

“Hagrid,” Regina reminds, “and he’s only half-giant.”

Roland nods, repeats “Hagrid,” and settles back down against her side, asking “What about Hagrid?”

“Well, Hagrid took Harry away, that very night, on his flying-” She doesn’t want to have to stop again to explain motorbikes, so she fudges, and says, “carriage. And they went to a tavern called The Leaky Cauldron, and…”

And on and on it goes, until Harry has his books, and his owl, and sickles and knuts and galleons, and Regina’s voice is hoarse from speaking, and Roland’s eyes are heavy with sleep. They never make it to the Hogwarts Express, he’s out like a light before then.

But he’s back the next night, and the one after that, and the one after, too. Even when Robin returns, safe and sound if a bit waterlogged, Regina is requested for bedtime detail, parsing out bits of story in manageable portions.

It’s a week later, maybe more, when Roland looks at her with sleepy eyes, his covers to his chin and murmurs, “When I’m big, I’m’n’a go to Hogwarts too.”

She doesn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise.


End file.
